


A little night music

by gixi_ninja



Series: Under the Dragon's Claw [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Musicians, Rebound, Seduction, musical foreplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 04:31:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14634183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gixi_ninja/pseuds/gixi_ninja
Summary: Lan brought his hand down. He added the mournful wailing of wind to his music and it curled around his raindrops and Huiqing’s ripples: a weeping and shrieking discordance to the steady rhythmic undertow.Huiqing moved his hand. Sharp, crisp high notes broke through the steadiness of Lan’s wind like rays of sun breaking through dark cloud. Lan’s head snapped around to look at Huiqing.Huiqing raised an eyebrow.Set before Under the Dragon's Claw





	A little night music

When Lan had received the invitation to share in the evening meal from the Eighteenth Prince of Xu he was sure that it meant disaster.

The events of the night before was a hazy blur at best.There had been _baijiu_ wine, music, and then more _baijiu_ to follow. Somehow he had stumbled into a street filled with red lanterns and voices beckoning from doorways. Why - Lan had thought - would he want a strange face or body to bury his sorrows in? Shun was gone to the borders and it was Lan’s own _damn_ fault.

Lan had taken two more steps before his foot caught in loose flagstone sending his body tumbling forward. His hands reached out in an effort to stop his fall and grabbed onto soft silk. Lan had looked up and a blurry face swam briefly in his sight before the bile had risen up in the back of his throat and  —

Oh - _Heavens -_ had he thrown up on the robes of the Eighteenth Prince of Xu?

Lan put a hand up to his pounding head. No matter how much of the foul hangover-cure brew he had managed to force down his throat that morning, the headache still lingered. Had he thrown up over Prince Huiqing’s robes? Was that why Prince Huiqing, the Eighteenth Prince of Xu and Vice-Commander of Xu’s Eastern Forces had invited him to his home? Was Lan about to be evicted in shame from Xu in his first week here, with all hopes of an Alliance irreparably destroyed?

“Cheng _daren_ , our master is expecting you.” Prince Huiqing’s servant met him at his manor’s front gate. He was all bows and smiles but Lan could not bring himself to return the expression. Inside the sleeves of his robes, Lan’s hands bunched into little fists. Shun. He was here to bring peace for Shun through the Alliance. Then perhaps he could talk to Shun again and have a chance of begging forgiveness for the insults he had flung in Shun’s face.

“Cheng _daren,_ this way.”

Lan followed the servant through a series of open walkways and  — stopped. In the distance he could hear the melodic tinkling of fingers plucking taught string. Someone was playing the qin? Lan’s fingers itched.

“Cheng _daren._ ”

“Ah I apologise,” Lan shook his head and turned again to follow the waiting servant. “I did not realise that your lord, his Highness, was married?”

The servant’s smile was bland and unreadable. “His Highness does not yet have a Consort, _daren_.”

Lan nodded and frowned. Not married? Prince Huiqing was known to be a mighty General. A strong warrior. Who in his household was a musician?

“Here, Cheng _daren_.” The servant bowed again and Lan nodded his thanks as he stepped past him and through the open doorway.

The first thing Lan saw were the lamps. A multitude of them floated through the darkness, tiny, flickering flames surrounding a central figure. Prince Huiqing’s head was down, his fingers: long, slim and tapered floated over the taut strings of the seven stringed zither _qin._ Every note he plucked was crisp and exquisite.

Lan sucked in a sharp breath.

Prince Huiqing looked up. “Ah!” The light from the lamps caught his eyes, making his irises glow gold. “Cheng Lan, you came!”

“Your Highness,” Lan clasped his hands together so the sleeves of his hanfu touched and bowed deeply. “I apologise for  — ”

Huiqing waved a hand. The music stopped. “What is this formal nonsense? Surely, Cheng Lan, after last night, you cannot still insist on all the formalities?”

 _After last night_? What had happened last night? Everything else was black blankness in his head. Lan’s head began to pound again.

“Please, sit.” Huiqing motioned to a table and set that had been set to his side.

Lan swallowed, bowed again and moved to sit. When he wondered, would Huiqing decide to unleash his fury?

“Could I offer you tea?”

A maid came with a shallow cup of steaming liquid. The scent Xu’s pu-erh tea filled the air: musty earth with the barest hint of hay.

“Thank you, your Highness.”

The music stopped again. “Actually, Cheng Lan, I was hoping that I could ask a favour of it, since after last night we are most certainly friends?”

Again, last night. Lan had thrown up all over Prince Huiqing’s robes. Lan was sure of it. After that  — he had somehow woken in the morning in his own bed. What happened in between?

Lan was never touching _baijiu_ again.

He picked up, instead, the offered cup of tea and raised it to his lips. The dark, almost savoury musty smokiness of pu-erh was the complete opposite of the crisp floral notes Lan preferred in his favourite tea _tie guan yin_. He swallowed it anyway. “If we are friends, your Highness, then what is a little favour?”

“Ah, good!” Huiqing’s face seemed plain and easily forgettable but when he smiled, it lit up brighter than any lantern. “I have heard, Lan that you are talented at the qin? I was hoping that tonight the two of us could play a duet  — a promise, perhaps of our kingdoms impending Alliance?”

It was true that of all the scholarly skills, the qin was Lan’s true talent. How, though, after a mere week in Xu had Prince Huiqing heard of it, and was this really the only reason Lan had been invited to his home after a night Lan desperately needed to remember?

Lan opened his mouth but all potential protests died in his throat when his eyes caught sight of the instrument that was carried across the room by two servants and placed before him. Glossy dark wood at the base that contrasted with seven rows of silk string twisted so tight they were almost invisible unless they caught the light.

There was no way Lan could refuse. He inclined his head again. “A promise, for the Alliance, your Highness,” he said. Lan ran his fingers down the string’s of the instrument before he twisted and plucked out his first note. It rang in the room around them. One by one, Lan played the rest of the notes, each of them following an inherent rhythm like the pitter patter of summer rain on rooftops.

In the corner of his eye, Lan saw Huiqing smile and lift his hand to his own qin. His glided his fingers over the strings and out came a wave of notes: ripples over a pond to complement Lan’s rain.

Lan tilted his head. He raised his other hand and they skimmed across each silk strand. He could feel how tense they were: stretched and wrung how. How much they were like his heart the moment after he had said  those stupid words of rejection to Shun.

Lan brought his hand down. He added the mournful wailing of wind to his music and it curled around his raindrops and Huiqing’s ripples: a weeping and shrieking discordance to the steady rhythmic undertow.

Huiqing moved his hand. Sharp, crisp high notes broke through the steadiness of Lan’s wind like rays of sun breaking through dark cloud. Lan’s head snapped around to look at Huiqing.

Huiqing raised an eyebrow.

Warmth flooded Lan’s cheeks. He dipped his head and sped his fingers up. The rain intensified to thick streams of water that poured down rocky crevices and flooded Huiqing’s ponds. His fingers moved to the thicker strings. There was rumbling of thunder.

The high notes of Huiqing’s qin screeched. Lightning to match Lan’s thunder. Huiqing’s own fingers sped up. Long dark flashes of light. Ponds that mixed with creeks and rivers until one body of water could not be distinguished from the next and then  —

Huiqing’s lip twitched. He lifted his hands off the strings for a brief moment  — silence — and then brought them down again in a crescendo of warmth and light that flooded out Lan’s rain until Lan’s fingers could do no more than make music to simply _follow._

The end of the storm. A rainbow.

Lan looked up. Huiqing’s eyes were dark, pupils blown open, fingers held just above the strings of the qin, not  — not quite touching. Huiqing’s fingers were long and tapered. Graceful musician’s fingers. Fingers that had already proven their dexterity.

Heat curled in Lan’s cheeks. He could hear the pant of his own breath in his ears. He snatched his hands away from the qin laid before him before the sweat on his palms could ruin the string.

“You are a great musician,” Lan said and could say no more. His mouth had gone strangely dry. He licked his lips.

“I think,” Huiqing said, “that we pair together nicely.” He rose from his seat behind the qin and walked towards Lan in three quick strides. The room had gone quiet. Too quiet. Where had all the servants gone to?

Lan wanted to turn his head but he was stopped by the brush of two callous roughed fingers across his cheek.

“I would relish the thought,” Huiqing said, “if we were to pair again like this, soon?”

Lan swallowed. He reached out and curled his fingers under around Huiqing’s wrist. Under his fingertips he could feel the _thump thump thurmp_ racing of Huiqing’s pulse. A pace that matched the pounding of his own heartbeat.

“I would like that,” Lan said.


End file.
